


Do You Want to Join the Torture and Interrogation Division?

by Charientist



Category: Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen
Genre: Bingo Books (Naruto), Body Language, Gen, Interrogation, POV Outsider, Silver Queen's Dreaming of Sunshine Universe, Torture & Interrogation Division (Naruto), discussion of torture as a method of interrogation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 01:23:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19074625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charientist/pseuds/Charientist
Summary: “Do you know why you’re here?” Ibiki asked.Shikako answered immediately. “I’m afraid not, Ibiki-taicho. Is there a mission?”Her face was a study in lack of reaction, no movement, no expression. Her hands rested flat on the table close to her body but completely still. Her blink rate remained at a steady six per minute.





	Do You Want to Join the Torture and Interrogation Division?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wafflelate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wafflelate/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Dreaming of Sunshine](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/53648) by Silver Queen. 



> Ibiki's point of view of the interrogation scene in Dreaming of Sunshine Chapter 100/101. All dialogue is pulled directly from that scene.

Morino Ibiki sat across from Nara Shikako in an interrogation room hidden in the depths of T&I.

“Do you know why you’re here?” Ibiki asked.

Shikako answered immediately. “I’m afraid not, Ibiki-taicho. Is there a mission?”

Her face was a study in lack of reaction, no movement, no expression. Her hands rested flat on the table close to her body but completely still. Her blink rate remained at a steady six per minute.

He was impressed at the range of tells she suppressed even as he refused to answer, letting her question hang in suspense as a hush settled in. Even ninja who should know better often faltered in the face of expectant silence.

She did not offer more information.

He gave her a few more seconds, watching for any reaction, before he reached into his pocket for the incriminating Bingo Book that had brought them both here. He kept his eyes on the young tokujo as he placed it on the table between them, front cover up.

Her blink rate increased (three in seven seconds) then slowed farther than before. Down to four per minute.

Perhaps she _hadn’t_ expected this. But then what did she expect… if anything?

“A Rock Bingo Book?” she asked, despite the obvious answer.

Her body angled back from the table, even as her neck stretched forward and her head tilted down. Her hands didn’t move from where they rested, not even twitching away from the book. Or toward it.

“I’m sorry, Ibiki-taicho. I have no idea?” There was a minor muscle twitch near her eyes, drawing the skin around them tighter without narrowing her gaze.

Ibiki kept eye contact as he opened the book to her page, glancing down only to locate the relevant line and rest one finger beside it.

Shikako pulled her hands back slightly but leaned forward to read. Her eyes darted side-to-side several times before they stilled for nearly a full second. She looked back up at him, eyes wide and pupils contracted to pinpricks.

“ _Interrogation_?” she asked, tone rising sharply.

Ibiki considered her sincerity for a moment. He still didn’t have enough information, but she was showing significantly more reaction than when she’d first walked in. “I’m very interested in anyone who gets this designation in their Bingo Books. Especially when I haven’t already heard about it.”

She paused for a moment, her eyes still wide though her pupils relaxed. Her gaze darted to the side, then down. Her left hand twitched against the table, fingers curling inward.

“Land of Stone,” she said. “It must have been. It would have been in my report, then?”

Land of Stone? So there was a singular incident or mission she believed could have given her this designation. Was that because she’d only performed one field interrogation or because she believed Rock could only have known about one of a larger number of incidents?

“Oh? I’ll make a note of it. Tell me what happened.”

He would need to follow up on the report itself, not only to ensure that it matched what she said here, but also to investigate why it hadn’t been brought to his attention sooner. If they already had a record of this, they shouldn’t have needed another country to report it before she was called in.

Shikako blinked three times in five seconds, her head twitching slightly to the side on the final blink, then she settled back to a slower rate.

_Six per minute may be her relaxed state, with lower indicating greater focus. Three rapid seems to be a reaction to the unexpected, perhaps a rapid restructure of thought._

“It was hardly an interrogation,” she said, although her tone was too even to be a true protest. “We just needed a criminal to confess to a crime that he’d framed someone else for. I only scared him until he did.”

How informative. ‘Scaring’ someone was as likely to be a euphemism for torture as ‘interrogation.’

“Scared him? How did you manage that?”

“Killing intent. It mixes weird with Shadow Justsu.” She shrugged like the information was unimportant.

Well. He already knew about the effect of Shadow Jutsu when combined with any form of Intent. At one point he’d talked with Shikaku about the potential for using it to help younger ninja acclimate to KI. Shikaku had never quite given him a straight answer and there were always more important and more urgent issues to consider.

But the use of KI in interrogation – successful use, no less – that was telling.

It might seem like an innocuous answer since every ninja used Intent instinctively. But Killing Intent was exactly what it sounded like; to use it, you had to have the will to follow through with murder, premeditated or not.

Even with the ‘amplification’ of her clan jutsu, Intent did very little unless a ninja meant it.

“Show me,” he ordered.

Shikako swallowed and started at him wide-eyed, pupils constricting again. That appeared to be her most genuine fear response. “Um.”

He stared back. After a long moment of silence, she closed her eyes, brow furrowing. He didn’t feel anything for several seconds and then – 

The strength of a ninja’s KI said a lot about them, but the feel of it said even more.

There was the untested combatant’s feeble resistance against someone out of their league that seemed to whisper: _I’m afraid; I’m so afraid. But I will fight you and I will try to kill you, because it is the only thing I can do_. There was the brutal lash of someone whose control had shattered, screaming: _I’ll kill you! I will_ murder _you! I swear if it’s the last thing I do I will hunt you down and make you beg for mercy!_

There were many different flavors, but Ibiki had found that the most effective was always the calm, oppressive distain of hardened shinobi who simply would not care if you died, and do not doubt that they can make it happen. It said: _You have no hope against me. If I decide it is necessary, you are dead. I will not regret it because **you are nothing**_.

That was the KI that rose from the young tokujo across from him. Detached, oppressive, merciless. Cold.

It wasn’t terribly strong; he felt worse on a regular basis from most of Leaf’s prisoners.

And yet.

She was young. She’d grown up in a stable, loving environment. She had a supportive, cohesive team. She had no previous record of cruelty or unnecessary violence, hadn’t even been noted for childish bullying in the Academy. She’d been flagged with a few potentially traumatic mission events but appeared to recover well, and not suspiciously so. She’d even made a heat-of-the-moment decision to release a defeated and vulnerable squad of very dangerous enemies.

That this decision had not massively backfired and had even created the current peace and alliance with Suna was, for this, irrelevant.

If he’d had to guess her default form of intent before now, based on all of the information he’d had on her, this would not have been it.

Then her hands flashed through the seals for her clan’s justu.

He didn’t see any change in her posture or expression to indicate it, but he felt the exact moment their shadows connected.

He was no longer sensing her threat pressing against him: it was inside him. Not hovering in the air against his skin but pressing into his lungs as he breathed it past his natural and carefully cultivated defenses.

It was less like a she was threatening him than it was like his own instincts were warning him of _danger, you’re facing real **danger**_.

He would have stiffened if her jutsu hadn’t held his body motionless. As it was, he just blinked.

“ **Talk** ,” she demanded. 

Her voice seemed to reverberate around them and inside his head. It pressed against his mind, against his _chakra_.

Then she opened her eyes. Her gaze met his and her pupils contracted. Her breath hitched, barely audible. Her hands unfolded and fell back to the counter faintly trembling.

He breathed.

“Like that. Kinda,” Shikako said. Uncharacteristic tonal rise-and-fall displaying clear discomfort.

“Just like that?” Ibiki replied.

It wasn’t much as far as interrogations went, euphemistic or otherwise. If that was as far as she’d gone, he wasn’t sure how far her information could have gone either. He wasn’t sure how long or how well the interrogation could have gone either.

It was intimidating, but so were plenty of other tactics. And it could be difficult to keep the pressure up if you went that route.

It was also a far sight from torture. If he could trust that she hadn’t done worse, he could remove her from his immediate concerns. Of course, just because she hadn’t gone that far yet didn’t mean she wouldn’t want to, wouldn't push harder next time she got the chance. Better to be sure of her character now than need to repeat this anytime it came into question.

Shikako shifted under his gaze, the most obvious sign of nerves she’d shown so far. Considering how well she’d hidden a wide range of tells when she first walked in, was that a sign that she was more comfortable now, or that her discomfort was growing beyond her ability to hide?

“Yeah, well, he wasn’t a ninja or anything like that,” she started, her words faster now. A little too fast. Another increased display of nerves. “So it didn’t take much. And, I mean, I don’t know if everything he said was _true_ , but we already had half the story from the guy that he framed, so I could make sure that much lined up. And the police were going to look into everything else.”

“Impressive,” Ibiki said honestly. “You knew both the questions and the answers before you started. That’s less common than you might think. And a bigger advantage, too.”

Shikako ducked her head.

Embarrassment? Humility? _False_ humility? Or just acknowledgement?

“So the real question is, ‘Do you want to join the Torture and Interrogation Division?’ You seem to have a handle on the Interrogation and we can easily educate you on the Torture.”

Ibiki smirked, dark and full of implied promise.

Shikako’s eyes went wide. Three rapid blinks, then nothing. Her body shifted back minutely, muscles visibly tensing.

“Uhm. No?”

_Are you asking or telling?_ Ibiki could almost hear Anko sniping over his shoulder. But there was more than one possible reason for the uncertainty there.

Is she not sure what she wants? Is she searching for the ‘right’ answer? 

“And why not?”

“I don’t think it works,” she said.

Her eyes went a little wider. Breath rate increased. She still hadn’t blinked again. Her right hand, resting open on the very edge of the table, twitched into a loose grip. As if to grab a weapon? Start a jutsu? She’d made the gesture before, but not with her dominant hand.

“What was that?” Ibiki asked, voice sharper.

“I don’t think it’s a reliable method of gathering intelligence,” she answered, eyes still wide and unblinking, hand still closing over open air. “A person in pain will say whatever is required to get the pain to stop, whether that’s true or false. And if you can’t determine the difference then they’ve won and made you stop, or you have to keep going anyway – in which case they will just tell you more potentially false information.”

Her teeth clicked shut audibly. The supratrochlear vein stood out on her forehead. She blinked once, marking her rate as down to once in a full minute.

Everything about her said _this person is under stress_.

None of it said she was lying.

“Good.”


End file.
